Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/599

 The Career of Napoleon Bonaparte 455 795. Cession of the Left Bank of the Rhine to France. In the treaty signed by Austria at Luneville in February, 1801, the emperor agreed, on his own part and on the part of the Holy Roman Empire, that the French Republic should thereafter possess in full sovereignty the territories lying on the left bank of the Rhine which belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, and that thereafter the Rhine should form the boundary of France from the point where it left Switzerland to where it flowed into Dutch territory. As a natural consequence of this cession various princes and states of the Empire found themselves dispossessed, either wholly or in part, of their lands. The Empire bound itself to furnish the hereditary princes who had lost possessions on the left bank of the Rhine with "an indemnity within the Empire." 796. Secularization of Church Lands. This provision implied a veritable transformation of the old Holy Roman Empire, which, except for the development of Prussia, was still in pretty much the same condition as in Luther's time ( 514). There was no unoc- cupied land to give the dispossessed princes ; but there were two classes of states in the Empire that did not belong to hereditary princes ; namely, the ecclesiastical states and the free towns. As the churchmen, archbishops, bishops, and abbots, who ruled over the ecclesiastical states, were forbidden by the rules of the Church to marry, they could of course have no lawful heirs. Should an ecclesiastical ruler be deprived of his realms, he might, therefore, be indemnified by a pension for life, with no fear of any injustice to heirs, since there could be none. The transfer of the lands of an ecclesiastical prince to a lay, that is, hereditary, prince was called secularization. As for the towns, once so powerful and important, they had lost their former influence and were defenseless. 797. Decree redistributing German Territory (1803). A decree issued by the diet of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803 transferred all the ecclesiastical states, except the electorate of Mayence, to lay rulers. Of the forty-eight imperial cities only six were left. Three of these still exist as republican members of the present German federation ; namely, the Hanseatic towns Ham- burg, Bremen, and Lubeck. Bavaria received the bishoprics of